the fragility of your petals
by ohmytheon
Summary: Todoroki has never really considered the idea of falling in love, so when it literally starts to choke him with azaleas, he's forced to realize that there are lot of things in life he didn't consider, many of them to do with Uraraka. (Hanahaki AU, Quirkless AU)


**Notes:** I was given this request by **Safri** on Twitter, who creates some of my absolute most favorite Todochako art ever. I could literally stare at her stuff for days and be amazed. I love it so much. I admittedly knew nothing about the Hanahaki Disease AU when she sent this to me, but after looking it up, I immediately was struck with it and, well, I wrote a lot. I got overwhelmed with feelings, okay? I don't write from Todoroki often, so I had fun. Prepare for some angst - with a happy ending.

 **Disclaimer:** I own absolutely nada.

* * *

Todoroki is sixteen when he starts coughing in class and thinks he's getting a cold. It's been snowing for a few hours and he has a habit of either dressing too hot or too cold. In his rush to not be late, he forgot his scarf and gloves this morning and felt chilled to the bone by the time he made it to school. Iida was ready to scold him for his forgetfulness, reminding him of his duties that he couldn't forsake if he got sick and that exams were coming up next week. Midoriya offered to let him borrow his scarf for the walk home.

And then there was Uraraka, beaming and willing to share the hot chocolate in her thermos that she liked to make whenever it snowed. It kept her hands warm. She didn't even drink it until they were sitting down in their homeroom class. She used the lid as a cup and poured out some for him. He held it in his hands briefly, allowing the warmth to soak into his skin and return feeling to his fingers, opening his mouth to thank her for her kindness.

And that's when Todoroki starts coughing.

It's a small cough, nothing to worry about. Uraraka curiously glances at him at his right, but he waves her concern away. "Probably just from the walk," he tells her.

"You need to be more careful," Iida reprimands, though not unkindly. He genuinely means well with his intense attitude. It took some getting used to, but after two years of being in the same class, Todoroki doesn't mind it.

His eyes roam back to Uraraka, who is still watching him, and he allows a faint smile to cross his face before he takes a sip of the hot chocolate. It's nothing special. He knows she stockpiles on the stuff when it's on special during the summer. Still, it warms his entire body and, more importantly, it soothes the itch left in his throat by the coughing. By the time he finishes it, he no longer feels the pressing need to cough, and he hands the lid back over her, murmuring his thanks.

"Any time," Uraraka tells him and he knows she means it.

He doesn't cough for the rest of the day.

* * *

It's over a month later when a coughing fit forces him to double over, one hand on his knees while the other covers his mouth. He's coughed here and there recently, but they were small ones, nothing like this. Now he's struggling to breathe and he doesn't know what to do. The coughing is so hard that it brings tears in his eyes and he starts to choke.

Uraraka is bent over him in concern, one hand on his back while the other grips her backpack tightly. He can feel the tension in her hand through his school jacket. "Todoroki, are you okay?"

He doesn't want to worry her, but he can't say that he is either. Instead he tries to nod his head and lifts his hand from his knee to wave dismissively. She pulls her hand off of his back, causing him to instantly mourn the reassuring contact. It's a strange, fleeting through. He's not a physical person by nature, choosing to keep his distance from most people. It's different for Uraraka, who seems to figure out the world through touch. She's cautious with him though, knowing how much he prefers his space, so when she does breach that distance between them, it's meaningful.

"Here, try to stand up straight and drink this," Uraraka tells him. She opened her backpack and pulled out a water bottle. He shakes his head, but she's insistent. "Don't be so stubborn."

Taking the water from her, Todoroki coughs more and forces himself to stand upright. It's hard when his entire chest is making him seize forward. He leans back and practically spills the water down his throat. At first, he chokes and, embarrassingly, water spills on his face, neck, and front of his shirt, but he powers through it. By the time he finishes the entire bottle his throat isn't so sore and he can breathe again. Most importantly, he isn't coughing anymore, so that's a relief.

Letting out a sigh, Todoroki tilts his head forward. "Thanks, Uraraka. I don't know where that came from." It had come out of nowhere. One second he was listening to her tell some absurd story that had her laughing and wildly gesticulating and the next he was doubled over trying to hack a lung out.

"Aw, now your whole face is red." Uraraka reaches out to touch his cheeks with her palms and squishes them together. If anyone else did that, he would've shoved them away, maybe even glared at them, but with her, he merely furrows his brow in confusion. Her hands are warm, somehow more than he feels, and her warmth spreads through his entire face. She laughs. "I don't think I've ever seen you blush before."

As he's staring down at her, the itch to cough scratches at his throat again. He swallows it down, his adam's apple bobbing, but before anything can happen, she pulls her hands away and picks up her backpack, resuming her story. She knows how little he likes to talk about his feelings, especially when he's embarrassed, and so she effortlessly fills the silence with her words. He appreciates it, but can't entirely rid himself of the feeling that something is wrong.

* * *

A month after turning seventeen, he politely excuses himself from the room to the bathroom, barely avoiding another public coughing fit. He doesn't want to worry the others and he doesn't like them knowing that he's been struggling with this more and more. Whatever it is, he'll get through this, even if it means going to the doctor. It has to be a cold.

Putting his hands on the edges of the sink, he coughs and coughs until he feels it. Something in his throat. He switches from coughing to actively choking and gagging as it works its way up until finally he coughs it fully up. His eyes are watering and he's gasping for air, but he's not coughing. The work is done. He rubs his eyes, takes a deep shaky breath, and looks down, only to pause.

Innocently sitting in the sink are a handful of flower petals. A beautiful light pink with darker pink spots closer to the middle. Using his fingertips, he moves them around the sink. They're real. They're flowers. He coughed up part of a flower. Has he been choking on them this whole time? Keeping them down and hidden in his lungs, unwilling to accept them? The sight of them strikes fear into his heart. He knows what they mean and yet it escapes him at the same time.

Why? Who? How?

Knocking on the door startles him and he jerks to look at it. "Todoroki, are you in there? Deku says you left abruptly and he's concerned. I told him that I'd check on you."

It's Uraraka.

He thinks of the pink of her cheeks, that almost permanent blush, and then looks down at the flower petals in the sink. His heart drops into the pit of his stomach.

"I'm fine," he says in an even tone. "I'll be out there soon."

"Okay, well, if you need anything…" She's unsure. He can tell by the sound of her voice, but she isn't going to press him, not like Midoriya will. She'll wait for him to tell her, except he can't. Not this. He can't tell her this. He can't tell Midoriya either. Not anyone. Instead, he takes the flowers in his hands and dumps them in the toilet, flushing them away. No one can know about this.

* * *

The months until summer are difficult, but he works through it, as he does with everything in his life. This is just another hurdle that he has to leap over. He does what he can to hide his coughing fits, but he can't do it all time. He promises to go to the doctor, but he never does. Todoroki isn't a liar by nature, but he's evasive and vague enough to where he can pass it off. Everything is fine. He's not coughing up flowers at least a week. He's not choking on azaleas growing in his lungs.

(He's not in love. He's seventeen, for goodness' sake. He's never seen a good example of love in his life. He doesn't know what it is. He can't possibly feel it, certainly not for one of his friends, who he's fairly certain has a crush on his best friend. If he saw her coughing up flowers, he knows in his heart that it wouldn't be for him.)

When June hits though, he can tell that Midoriya isn't fooled that everything is alright. He doesn't think Uraraka, Iida, or Momo believe it either, but they don't go out of their way to question him. They're on summer break, sitting at the edge of a dock, feet in the water, when Todoroki starts to cough again. He brings a handkerchief to his mouth and moves to stand up to leave, but Midoriya puts a hand on his shoulder. It's not a hard hold, one he could easily shrug off, but he doesn't. He stays sitting, coughing, until finally the deed is done.

"How long?" Midoriya simply asks.

Todoroki almost crushes the flower petals in the handkerchief, but then his eyes catch a glimpse of Uraraka splashing in the water with Asui and he hesitates. "Since December." They've grown in numbers since then. It won't be long before he can make multiple flowers out of the petals. He has yet to cough up a full one though, so there's that relief.

Midoriya pulls his hand away, a frown on his face. "Why didn't you say something?"

"It's not something you can fix," Todoroki points out. "It's something I have to face on my own."

"It sounds more like you're avoiding it," Midoriya says and he's not entirely wrong.

There are a lot of things that Todoroki could be doing right now to help ease the pain - a lot of things he should have done to bring an end to his suffering - but he can't seem to do them. It feels wrong. It's not like he can tell her, not when he knows she doesn't feel the same way. The fact that he's coughing up flowers that make him think of her is a stark reminder. He could, he supposes, try to make an effort to show his interest in her that will in turn cause her feelings to blossom towards him.

Instead he pulls away every time she gets close. Her smiles feel like knives in his heart and laughs like smoke in his lungs. It's not her fault. He was never taught what love was supposed to feel like, only ever seeing the opposite after his mother had her flower infection removed, so it's only natural that it hurts him.

"Who is it?" Midoriya asks gently.

"I'd rather not talk about it anymore," Todoroki tells him flatly.

"Okay." Midoriya nods his head. "But if you ever need to, I'm here for you." Todoroki knows that. If there was ever a best friend, it's him. Midoriya turns his gaze to look at the others out on the lake. "Uraraka noticed too. She asked if maybe you'd been suffering from this, but I didn't know. You've been withdrawn all spring."

Todoroki tries not to react. He doesn't swallow, doesn't take a sharp intake of breath, doesn't close his eyes. He merely watches alongside Midoriya as their friends play in the water, not a care in the world. A hint of bitterness strikes through him, questioning why he has to go through this when he never considered love or anything like it, before it fades away into hollowness, like there's a piece of his heart missing. It's exhausting - feeling something that someone else doesn't.

After climbing onto one of the rafts they brought with them, Uraraka waves over at them and calls out, "C'mon, you two! You've got to get your hair wet at some point!"

For a brief second, Todoroki entertains diving in and swimming over to her. Do something as silly as flip out off the raft, which he knows will have her sputtering and laughing. Wrap his arms around her so that she's snug against his chest. Hide a grin in her wet hair. He wants to do it so bad that the urge to cough starts up all over again and he doesn't even think there's a flower in there to be brought up this time. He's not the one she wants to do that though. It pains him to admit it, but he knows it's true.

Instead, he looks over at Midoriya and says, "You first."

Midoriya grins, but Todoroki sees the hesitation and sadness in his bright green eyes.

* * *

"Ah! Todoroki, watch out!"

He barely has the time to turn around to see what he needs to watch out for, much less dodge, so he's taken off guard completely when Uraraka crashes into him, having lost control while attempting to skate downhill. It's one of Iida's hobbies, which he's strangely talented in, and Uraraka was determined to pick it up as well. So far, she's not had any luck, but this is the first time that she has caused anyone else to crash with her as far as Todoroki knows.

So of course it was him.

She catches him right in the middle as he was turning towards her. Out of instinct, he wraps his arms around her, so that when the two of them go flying into the grass, he lands on his back with her on top of him. It knocks the air right out of his lungs, but seeing as how he's used to gasping for air these days, it's not so bad. Uraraka's weight is solid on top of him, if not a little awkward because of how she's holding her feet up so that the skates don't sit painfully on his shins. Her face is pressed against his chest and her hands grip him tightly.

It's the closest they've ever been. Sure, they've hugged before plenty of times. While he's not one for them typically, Uraraka is a big hugger and he's grown to realize over the past few months just how indulgent he's always been when it comes to her and all her whims. This isn't a new thing. These flowers have been festering inside of him slowly, silent and deadly. He can feel the swell of her chest, her hips against his, one of his legs in between hers. If she can't feel his heart stuttering wildly, then she's out of her mind, but she can attribute it to her crashing full force into him.

The throbbing in his head is almost enough to distract him from that ever present urge to cough.

Almost.

"Todoroki?" she prompts in a quiet voice.

He has to practically shove her off of him so that he can roll over and cough something terrible. Somehow, he manages to get on his hands and knees to make it easier. His mind is screaming at him to stop, to get up and run away (she can't see him like this, she can't, he can't let her), but his body won't move. His fingers dig into the ground, his blunt nails tearing at the grass and dirt underneath, and he coughs and coughs until finally the petals sputter out and float to rest next to his pale hands.

Distantly, he was aware of her almost screaming in panic while he was coughing, but he could do nothing to reassure her that he was fine. The second the petals come out and he stops coughing though she goes silent and he is acutely aware of that. He takes a breath, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and sits back on his haunches. Shame eats away at him. This is not how he wanted her to find out, if at all. He can only imagine what she's thinking now as she stares down at the pink flower petals.

With the sort of delicate touch that always brings her to mind, Uraraka picks up one of the petals and cradles it in her palms. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Todoroki turns away, humiliated and frustrated. "It's not your problem."

"Yeah, but I could have helped you!" she insists. She sets the petal aside and reaches out to wipe his sweaty hair out of his face. "You shouldn't have to suffer alone. You don't have to do that anymore. You know that, right?"

It occurs to him that she doesn't know. She doesn't realize that the reason he's spitting up flowers, choking on his own feelings, is because he loves her and his entire being doesn't know how to handle that. Of course she doesn't though. He's seen how much her own insecurities eat away at her at times, how she worries about not being good enough, how hard she tries to prove herself to not only others but herself. He can see her wracking her brain for who these flowers might belong to and it kills him only a little less than the flowers themselves.

"Please don't hide how you feel," Uraraka tells him.

He almost laughs. Almost coughs. Instead, he breathes out a single, "Okay," and tries to tell himself that he needs to do something or he really might die.

* * *

The leaves begin to change and so does he.

For starters, he tries to become bolder. He has never been one to be afraid to do things, but with Uraraka, it's different. He doesn't know the lines, can't see the boundaries, and it makes him hesitate. So he starts off small. Instead of only her initiating physical contact, he does it here and there too. Putting a hand on the small of her back when walking through the doorway, nudging her ahead of him. Touching her arm to get her attention. Even hugging her goodbye. She beams every time he does that.

He coughs up more flowers. They're beginning to look not-so-alive, but that could be just him since it's autumn and all.

Instead of staying quiet and letting people pull words out of him, he speaks up more when around her. It brings him further into the conversation and their group. In the end, he feels not only closer to her, but the others. He can see Midoriya smiling and knows that his friend knows. As much as he feared it, Midoriya doesn't look upset. In fact, he appears pleased and will often start conversations that he seems to know will bring both Uraraka and Todoroki into it.

He coughs harder. It hurts so much. He's surprised there isn't blood yet, but it's coming.

When someone suggests plans, where he would maybe not go, he hesitantly agrees. A lot of the time it's stuff that he wouldn't normally do or think that he would like, but it makes everyone happy and, by the time he's on his way back home, he's not upset about going. It makes him feel like there was something missing. He's been holding himself back, not with just her, but his entire life. Why did he do that? Was he afraid of something all along? Of gaining something good and losing it?

Is that why he's choking on these flowers?

He doesn't run away and pretend nothing happened when he has a coughing fit. Having them in public is still humiliating and he hates it when it happens in front of his friends. It's like everyone knows, but they're too kind to admit that they do, so when it hits him, they make excuses for him. He'll duck away, force the flowers out of his lung, and that's that.

Sometimes Midoriya comes with him. Sometimes it's Uraraka. She wraps her arms around him from behind, pressing her cheek against the curve of his spine, and holds him until the coughing ceases. It's easier with her. It ends quicker. The last time he didn't cough up anything at all, although he could feel the azalea petals resting in his chest. It made his heart skip a beat, but then when he turned to face her, she simply smiled and said nothing that might ease that ache.

It's not her job though. She's not required to do that - to do anything really. He knows that. Of course he wants more, but he can't guilt her into returning his feelings. Either she will or she won't. There are things he can do about that if it becomes too unbearable, but for now, it's worth the pain. It would hurt worse without it, he thinks.

* * *

They're on a weekend camping trip. It's late and everyone has gone to bed, but Todoroki is still sitting at the fire, poking at the embers to keep it going. If the flowers keep up, this might be his last autumn, so he's started to sleeping less. There are things that he doesn't want to miss. The coughing fits don't come as often recently, but they hurt worse when they do. Whole flowers this time, multiple ones, like they build up and then need to be released.

Leaves crunching behind him cause him to look back, but then his heart eases into a steady beat when he realizes that it's Uraraka. She's got a blanket wrapped around her to shield her from the cold. "Can't sleep. I didn't pack properly."

"We probably planned this trip too late," he admits. He had been wary when Midoriya brought it up, but couldn't say no when everyone else was so excited over the prospect. Momo had never been camping before. Jirou knew some great hiking trails. Iida used to do it with his family when he was younger. Uraraka wanted to see the stars. How could he say no to that?

Uraraka sits down next to him on the log, leaning toward the fire for warmth. "It's still been a lot of fun though. I'm kind of sad to go back."

"Yeah, it's been fun," Todoroki agrees. It will be sad to go back. They've only been out here for three days, but it was nice to be removed from everything else in his life. He could feel the flowers in his chest, but they weren't so bad out here where the air was fresh and he felt like he could breathe better. Being away from the outside world made him feel...peaceful.

"Hmph, you're so warm," Uraraka mumbles as she rests her head against him. He smiles a little as he watches her close her eyes. A few minutes later, she's out cold. They had a very long day today spent hiking, swimming, and roasting food and marshmallows at night. Everyone was exhausted. He is too, but he wanted to spend a little more time with the fire.

After letting the fire finally die, he picks up a bucket of water and dumps it to ensure that there are no remaining dangerous ember. "Up you go," Todoroki murmurs to himself as he carefully picks Uraraka up like a bundle. Her blanket flops off of her as he carries her towards her tent and she instinctively twists in his arms to get closer to him. It's awkward getting her in the tent without collapsing face first, but he's built enough muscle in track to stay standing.

Before he can make a safe getaway from her tent and return to his, Uraraka mumbles a sleepy, "Shouto?" and everything comes to a freezing halt.

He turns back to her slowly, bent over awkwardly to keep from upending her tent. "Yeah?"

"Stay?" she asks and he knows she's only saying this because she's tired and cold. It's not him. It's someone else that she's thinking of. (But she called his name.) "I don't…" She rolls onto her side, hiding her face from him. "Never mind. I'm sorry."

"No, I…" He swallows. "I can stay. If you want." He tries for a joke and feels like he misses it entirely when he adds, "I'm basically a human heater."

Uraraka isn't facing him, but he sees the edges of her lips turn into a smile. "Yeah, I want you to."

Carefully, as if he might shatter the moment, Todoroki zips up the tent so bugs won't get in and eases himself down next to her. He takes off his shoes and sets them next to hers, realizing that she walked out there with a blanket and only socks. When he lies down next to her, he's taken off guard by her lifting the blanket and throwing it over him, warmth immediately enveloping him. It doesn't seem like she'd be that cold, if he's being honest.

But then she's snuggling up next to him on her side and he feels himself move onto his so that he's facing her rather than actively make the move. She has one arm over side, her hand clutching the back of his shirt, while he rests one on her hip. She's all fire under his touch and yet she's lighter than air. Now this is the closest that they've ever gotten. He can see every fleck of gold in her brown eyes that he never noticed before. There's no way that she can miss anything in his.

He opens his mouth to make a comment about not coughing in her face when it suddenly hits him how easy he can breathe. How there's nothing smothering him inside his chest. He's light. He's not choking. It's gone. Faded away. They're gone. Dissolved into air. He sucks in a deep breath, just to prove it to himself, and finds himself blinking in shock when he releases it easily. The shy smile doesn't leave Uraraka's face as she watches him process all of this.

"Yeah?" he can only ask.

Uraraka blushes and scoots so that she can tuck her face against his neck. She clings to him and he pulls her closer so that she's snug against him. It feels so right and it's only then that he also realizes that he doesn't feel like something is missing with her in his arms. "Yeah," she says, her breath hot against his neck, warmth blossoming in his chest.

He doesn't cough up a single petal again.


End file.
